AuthorTopic: [SOLVED] Childproofing Win2k pro? (Read 11979 times)

I've been working out of town for a bit and will be here for a bit longer. I have my family with me and we are staying with "Grandpa" to ease costs and because it's fun for the kids.

Anyhow Grandpa's computer is Win2k pro. My 4 year old loves to play his games and Grandpa has been more than kind to let all of us use his computer as much as we need. I made a guest account for my son and "thought" he wouldn't be able to screw up anything on Grandpa's desktop. I was wrong.

What I had done is to hide all desktop icons and put his game icons on the taskbar so he wouldn't mess with the icons that are available for all users. This is important since Grandpa happens to be a police chief and he has software to connect to his office and use the computer at the station. His banking and other things are on this machine as well.

Though Grandpa uses the computer a lot, he doesn't have a clue how to straighten things out when something goes haywire.

Well today my son was clicking on God knows what. Grandpa's desktop had huge icons, and it was tipped on it's side. And all the sound setting were muted and goofed up.

I didn't know what my son did on his desktop could affect what happens on Grandpa's desktop.

I'm pretty out of the loop these days with Windows, and have never had the need to lock anything down as I've always trusted members of my household not to mess me up. And me messing With Win2k is a crapshoot.

Any thought's how I can go about this? Google is just producing Net Nanny and the like. I just need to find out how to configure this beast per user.

Well today my son was clicking on God knows what. Grandpa's desktop had huge icons, and it was tipped on it's side. And all the sound setting were muted and goofed up.

When you say "tipped on its side," do you mean the taskbar was on the left or right side instead of on the bottom? If so, position your mouse cursor on the clock and drag the taskbar till you slam it onto the bottom.

As for the icons, right-click on the desktop and select Properties. Look for an Effects tab. There should be a box for Use Large Icons. Make sure it's unchecked. Also check the resolution (Screen Area) on the Settings tab. Move the slider to the right and OK your way out.

Double-clicking on the Volume Control at the right System Tray area should open the mixer and you should be able to fix up the sound.

I don't have W2K here so I'm not sure I have all the right terms. I did look at 98SE running in my QEMU virtual machine.

Thanks so much for the help! The fixing part I already got taken care of. It's preventing it from happening again that I need help with.

Quote

When you say "tipped on its side," do you mean the taskbar was on the left or right side instead of on the bottom?

Yep, taskbar was on the right. LOL I ment tipped literally. The entire screen was rotated 90 degrees to the left. I had to tip my head to the side and out think the mouse to get the cursor to move where needed.

I thought if my son had his own log in name that whatever he did to his own desktop wouldn't affect any users other than himself. He gets very click happy. And it's amazing what he can get in to. I wish he could read so he could make a intelligent choice when those dialog boxes pop up.

What type of user did you assign to your son. I'm not sure what the default is for Win2K anymore but if it is a power user then your son would have significant authority to adjust default settings for the machine (which affects all users) such as rotating the screen. Perhaps changing his user type to "users" or even "guest" would be safer.HTH,Mike

oops - saw that you made a "guest" account for him. Didn't realize that a guest could modify video properties.

« Last Edit: June 14, 2007, 06:06:15 am by mikecindi »

Logged

The plans of the diligent lead to profit...Pro. 21:5 VL64 7.1 RLU 486143

Actually I used the "guest" term loosely. He "was" in the users group. That's what it defaulted to when I made the acct. So I created a "child" group and then added him to it. But then I couldn't figure out how to change the rights of the group. Should I add him to the "guest" group if it exists instead?

Keeping him out of the other accounts is not a problem because if he managed to log himself out, he would have to type in the name of the user he would want to log in as.

The problem is that I can't remove the icons on his desktop without it affecting the desktops of the other accounts. So I hid his icons and that helped. But he gets very right click, left click upside down click happy and all heck breaks loose. Right clicking on the desktop gives a world of opportunity for him. Then he just selects and clicks until there are tons of things pulled up. And oddly enough instead of it just hosing his desktop only, the changes are made globally.

I would love to have him run a VL live CD but he is used to his educational games, and other games (Dora and other kiddie stuff that I can't get wine to run) that open source just can't touch. His computer at home (he's had one since he was two) is dual boot and he gets pretty bored with the kids stuff that comes with Linux.

I would love to have him run a VL live CD but he is used to his educational games, and other games (Dora and other kiddie stuff that I can't get wine to run) that open source just can't touch. His computer at home (he's had one since he was two) is dual boot and he gets pretty bored with the kids stuff that comes with Linux.

I figured that was the case. I wish Linux devotees would realize that Linux can't do everything--there are some programs that work on Windows only and there are no Linux substitutes. Have you checked out various kids' Web sites? My grandchildren, who live far away so are not here often, have several sites they like with fun games that appeal to a range of ages. These should work with a VectorLinux LiveCD or any LiveCD that installs Flash and the MPlayer Plugin.

I'm not real familiar with Windows 2000. I've never used it on my systems, but I do take care of four computers for a small nonprofit, two of which are using W2K. I don't work on them often.

If you log in as Administrator you should be able to set up an account for him with very limited privileges. I wish I could give more details, but there are lots of administrative tools in W2K because it is intended as a business OS. I can't imagine that there is not a way to prevent a user from making a system change that would affect other accounts on the system.

You also might want to teach your son to NOT click on everything. That's a sure way to get infested with malware if he goes on the Web at all. He may as well learn safe computing from the start.--GrannyGeek

I would love to have him run a VL live CD but he is used to his educational games, and other games (Dora and other kiddie stuff that I can't get wine to run) that open source just can't touch. His computer at home (he's had one since he was two) is dual boot and he gets pretty bored with the kids stuff that comes with Linux.

I figured that was the case. I wish Linux devotees would realize that Linux can't do everything.

Of course it can. It's Turing complete after all.

More seriously, when all things are considered, it does a much better job than many other operating systems. Of course, some programs haven't been ported yet, but very few people are actually actively suggesting everyone should totally abandon whatever they are using now.

And, of course, there are a few programs that don't run on Windows at all, and many that have somewhat crippled ports (like Apache), not to mention the less tangible benefits like resourcefulness and security...

That seems like it would do the trick but when trying to set it up I got a bit scared as I couldn't see a option to apply the changs to a group or a individual user. I was afraid the changes would apply to all users.

BTW Thanks to all for your ideas and tips. Resolving this means a ton to us.

Disclaimer: I don't have a Win2K setup to verify all of this and am using memory (FWIW) and my WinXP sp2 setup for the following.

Open the "Administrative Tools" in the control panel.Select "Computer Management" -> "Local Users and Groups" -> "Users" -> the account you wish to modify (your son's account)Select the "Member Of" tab and then if the group you want is not visible (i.e. Guests) then select "Add"At this point you can either type in "Guests" or select "Advanced"If you type in "Guests" you may want to click "Check Names" just to verify that the "Guests" group is available.If you select "Advanced" then select "Find Now" and select Guests (or whatever account group you want to assign to the user (your son).Then click "OK" until you have backed out of all the open dialogs which should get you back to "Computer Management". (A similar process can be achieved through the "Groups" option instead of the "Users" if you want to do it that way.)IF you want to be even more "restrictive" (or less as the case may be) then you can open the "Local Security Policy" in the "Administrative Tools" and modify the various group priviledges. This requires a bit of patience to work through if you choose to do it.I'm not sure if these steps are necessary but I would recommend at a minimum checking that the group you assign your son to is enabled. Some preinstalled setups have the "Guests" group disabled.To check this: under "Local Security Settings" select "Security Options" and look for "Accounts: Guest account status" and verify that it is "Enabled". Then under "Security Options" look for "Deny logon locally" and remove "Guests" if it is there.HTH,Mike

Logged

The plans of the diligent lead to profit...Pro. 21:5 VL64 7.1 RLU 486143